Displaced Kashmiri Pandits returned to the Sumbal area of Bandipora district in Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, 17 May to celebrate the Sumbli Mawas festival — their first such gathering at the historic site in 36 years. Scores of migrant Pandits from across the country converged at the Nand Kishore temple for the three-day observance, marking a rare and emotionally charged homecoming.

A Festival Rooted in Faith and Memory

The Sumbli Mawas festival is observed on the birth anniversary of revered Kashmiri Pandit saint Maharaj Nand Kishore, after whom the historic temple in Sumbal is named. For many attendees, the pilgrimage was not merely religious — it was a return to a homeland they were forced to abandon more than three decades ago.

Migrant Pandits who originally hailed from the Sumbal area described the occasion as an opportunity to reconnect with their roots. Photographs and accounts from the site show both Muslims and Pandits weeping together as they reunited with old neighbours, with many describing the reunion as a moment where the barriers of religion and politics momentarily dissolved.

A Landscape Transformed by Decades of Displacement

The Sumbal area that returning Pandits encountered bore little resemblance to the one they left. Many well-known Kashmiri Pandit families had once owned large tracts of land in the region, much of it under apple orchards. Those expanses have since been replaced by houses and commercial establishments.

According to accounts from community members, most Kashmiri Pandit families made distress sales of their ancestral properties in the years following their displacement. In several cases, lands were reportedly encroached upon and illegally occupied during the peak period of violence in the Valley in the early 1990s.

The Weight of Forced Migration

The Kashmiri Pandit exodus of the early 1990s remains one of the most painful chapters in the community's history. Lakhs of members of the minority community were forced to flee the Valley as Pakistan-backed terrorism engulfed the region, leaving behind homes, land, and livelihoods to seek refuge in Jammu and other parts of the country. For most, a permanent return has not been possible.

Elders who lived through the displacement carry the deepest scars, and the Sumbli Mawas gathering offered many of them a rare chance to revisit — even briefly — the places that shaped their lives.

Security and Administration in Place

Deputy Commissioner Bandipora Indu Kanwal Chib visited the Nand Kishore temple and participated in special prayers during the festival. The Senior Superintendent of Police, Bandipora, separately reviewed security arrangements ahead of the celebrations. Authorities put in place elaborate security and administrative measures to ensure the smooth conduct of the three-day event.

What This Moment Signals

The return of displaced Pandits to Sumbal, however symbolic, is being seen as a meaningful gesture of cultural continuity. Whether such gatherings can catalyse a broader conversation about the community's return to the Valley — and the restitution of lost properties — remains an open question. For now, Sumbal offered something rarer: a moment of shared grief and shared memory between communities long separated by violence and circumstance.